Ms Sarah Stewart

Director Of Pgce Programme In Wales

School of Education, Childhood, Youth & Sport

sarah.stewart@open.ac.uk

Biography

Professional biography

Dr Sarah Stewart (BA Hons; PGCE with QTS; MA Education; EdD; SFHEA) is a Senior Lecturer at The Open University in the School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport.

Sarah is the Director of the PGCE programme in Wales which saw its first cohort of students graduate in 2022. This innovative new two year programme seeks to widen access to teaching and promote diversification of the education workforce in order to support Welsh Government’s national aspirations of reformed, high-quality initial teacher education (ITE).

Sarah has worked in Higher Education (HE) for over a decade, supporting educators in both formal and non-formal education settings, across phases and sectors and drawing on a multi-disciplinary approach to her work with a particular interest in supporting teachers. As founding Chair of the OU ITE Partnership Committee, Sarah established the new accredited Partnership and successfully led re-accreditation in 2024. The OU ITE Partnership is now a thriving community of over 250 student teachers, 300 partner schools, 60 practice tutors and 6 lead partner schools. Sarah leads a dedicated PGCE team located across Wales and the UK.

Sarah takes an active interest in education in Wales, contributing her experience and expertise nationally - from holding the Chair of USCET Cymru, being an inaugral member of the Professional Learning Endorsement Panel for Welsh Goverment and supporting quality in her role as trained peer-inspector for Estyn. As a system leader within education in Wales, Sarah has ensured that all OU routes into teaching in Wales are offered bilingually and fosters a strong sense of language and culture across the Partnership, valuing the Welsh language, diversity and promoting anti-racist teaching. In her stakeholder work, she has built working relationships with Welsh Government, Regional Consortia, Local Authorities and Headteachers across Wales and remains to be a passionate advocate for the teaching profession, drawing on her skills and experiences as a teacher and educator and sharing the OU vision for all learners in Wales, at all ages, to access transformative, life-changing opportunities for learning which enrich society.

Research interests

As an academic researcher, Sarah’s broad interests are best characterised by a focus on issues of social equity and justice within education as well as supporting quality and innovation in teaching and learning. Sarah works closely with the OU PGCE programme’s Research Fellow, Curriculum Tutors and ArDdysg to oversee a transformative strategy aimed at building student teachers’, mentors’ and tutors’ engagement with educational research to support the quality of teaching and learning in schools and has shared her expertise in alternative, work-based university-led ITE provision through her publications.

Her doctoral research focused on teachers' understanding of children's human rights education within the school curriculum in Wales. Through her dissemination work, she has an ambition to support practitioners across Wales to step into this new curriculum terrain to enact rights-based pedagogcial approaches which can underpin effective, high-quality teaching as well as advance the social justice mission of transformative education.

Within her scholarship and knowledge-exchange, Sarah has sought to embed approaches to increasing the research capacity across the education workforce in Wales, both within schools and through Higher Education more broadly. Through her her leadership of the Collaborative Research Network for Equity and Inclusion, as well as holding the Chair for the Wales Higher Education Research Association (WHERA), Sarah is able to jointly develop cross-sector approaches to knowledge-exchange and educational research alongside other university partners.

Teaching interests

Sarah specialises in effective pedagogy across diverse settings and phases, emphasising the relational nature of teaching. She has taught on undergraduate and postgraduate programs, including BA Primary Education Studies and MA Education. At the Open University, Sarah has advanced her expertise in online and distance learning, leading an academic team to co-construct a conceptual framework driving the Partnership’s vision for distance and blended student teacher learning. She designs learning resources for teacher educators and regularly contributes to professional learning programmes, conferences, and events.

External collaborations

Sarah oversees stakeholder management and fosters relationships across the OU ITE Partnership, including school-based educators, employment-based student teachers, headteachers, Regional Consortia, and Local Authorities. At the sector level, she collaborates with other ITE providers in Wales on key initiatives. Sarah leads the Partnership's engagement with external regulatory bodies, including Welsh Government, the Education Workforce Council, and Estyn, to enhance programme quality and innovation. Her commitment to educational excellence also extends to wider roles as an experienced External Examiner and validation panel member, providing oversight and advice on teaching, learning, and student outcomes across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

International links

Sarah co-researched an international Erasmus+ project on equity in education, collaborating with nine institutions across five European countries. The project, involving schools, universities, and educational authorities, developed tools for school leaders to evaluate and enhance equity practices. Sarah led the creation of the methodological guide, including a literature review and conceptual framework, and contributed to a digital equity evaluation framework and an online training program for leaders.By 2019, the project had reached over 600 school leaders through dissemination events, trained over 50 headteachers, published five journal articles, and attracted over 10,000 visits to its resource site.